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/lit/ - Literature

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3997029 No.3997029 [Reply] [Original]

Hello /lit/,

For anyone here who has some experience with languages: once you get to a reasonably advanced level, what is the best and/or most rapid way to expand your vocabulary?

>> No.3997056

Once you get to a reasonably advanced level the vocab doesn't matter

at least that's how it was with Latin

>> No.3997073

Reading the classics, of course. Not too old ones if you want to have "practical" vocabulary, whatever that means.

>> No.3997076

Reading.

>> No.3997088

>>3997073
>>3997076

To be honest, I was hoping that someone would mention something besides the obvious course of reading, since it becomes extremely tedious after a while to use a dictionary up to three times per page.

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, though. Is it better to look up every word you don't recognize, or to just keep going and eventually assimilate meaning through context?

>> No.3997107

>>3997088
assimilate meaning through context!!!

>> No.3997116

newspapers, articles

>> No.3997118

>>3997088
if it's how you learned english, it's how you learn any other language

>> No.3997191

>>3997029
flash cards

>> No.3997204

>>3997029

get an oxford concise dictionary then memorize it.
surest way to expand your vocabulary.

>> No.3997575

I'd say find if there's an Anki deck for advanced whatever language you're learning

Either that or just open a dictionary every single day and find the first unknown word in the page, make it into a flashcard, and review a bunch of them every day.

Reading is good but sometimes you find only 10 or 20 new words in a book.

>> No.3997617

>>3997575
Thanks a lot for the suggestion! I'd never heard of Anki before, but it seems very useful and I've found several advanced vocabulary decks for the language I'm studying.

>> No.3998138

>>3997617
yup, anki is great. Also, try reading bilingual editions of your favorite books (one page is your native language, the other is your target language). Or do what I do, buy the book you wanna read in the target language, and get the same book in english on your kindle. Not as comfy as the bilingual edition, but it works.

That way, you'll have fun reading a book you enjoy, you'll learn tons of new words, and you'll see them in context, not out of a flash card/dictionary. Great success!

>> No.3998184

>>3997029
Read a whole hell of a lot. When you come across a word you don't know, figure out what it may mean by context, and if that's not clear look it up. Then try to use that word yourself several times in every day speech or writing.

>> No.3999034

I'm a professional translator.

One tip I'd give you is when you come accross an unkown word in the language you're learning, use a monolingual dictionary rather than a bilingual one.

Other than that just reading and learning stuff from different fields, to go beyond basic vocabulary.

Anki is a good tool too but only for this particular thing, to become proficient in a language you basically need to do everything, write, speak, listen, read. Just one is not enough.

>> No.4000653

Frequency lists and literally reading a dictionary.
Using loci/association to first remember the words, then SRS to turn them into reflexes.

>> No.4000902

>>3998138
On this, where is a good place to buy non-English books? I'd really rather not have to stare at PDFs all day, I'd like to own the books themselves

>> No.4001062

I live in a spanish speaking housewhold and I dont speak spanish. I can read a page fast with slight mistakes in pronunciation but I need to read it slow and look for meanings for words I never came into contact in the typical day to day setting. Not to mention I couldn't tell you all the irregular and regular, past tense and future tense conjugations but if I think of a sentence in my head it would be conjugated already perfectly most of the time.
How do I unlock full speaking mode, Im like 60 percent their.

>> No.4001383

>>4001062
Don't worry. I speak Spanish natively and I don't know the tenses very well either, it just comes out right. I'm also a native English speaker, and it doesn't happen to me in English either, it just, again, comes out as it must be.

>> No.4001649

>>4001062
just spend more time in that household, it's the best way to learn a language, if you can just immerse yourself in that language

>> No.4001692

Find vocabulary lists online.
I recently had an English entry test and as a preperation for this, I checked out a number of vocabulary lists and noted down every word I didn't know or only knew via context. Then I went through those words once every day to remember all of them and their meaning.

I'd also say reading, but I don't like looking up words all the time while I am reading. You could note them down though or mark them in the book and once you take a break from reading, you look up and write down the meaning of the words.